Four days, one city and over 15 events—the Mumbai Design Trail (February 13-16) is set to make its debut in and around the city of Mumbai this weekend. Attend perfume workshops, visit design museums or shop-hop the best design stores in town, from one wine-and-cheese party to another.

Our pick from the Design Trail is the The Table farm workshop, which takes you to their Alibaug-based farm to stroll through their homegrown produce, followed by a farm-fresh lunch. We spoke to owner of The Table, Gauri Devidayal, about what inspired her to conjure this farm.

After ‘house-made’, ‘home-grown’ is the buzzword in commercial kitchens around the world. The harvest from the farm ends up either on Devidayal’s own dining table or as mise en place at The Table. “It happened by accident,” she says about giving her diners a partial farm-to-table experience. “In 2008, we started growing spinach for personal consumption. One day, I took the surplus to our restaurant and the chef was quite impressed with its quality. That’s when the idea struck,” she says.

Over the last three years, Devidayal converted the one-acre land, which was until then used to grow Indian staples such as cauliflower, bottle gourd and lady’s finger, into a patch that bloomed with red and white watermelon radishes, edamame beans, kale and other exotic produce in order to supplement purchases and imports.

PUTTING DOWN ROOTSThe global trend of locavore dining (eating local produce) started off with field-to-fork eateries in Europe and USA, especially California, in the ’70s. The next generation of restaurants, in the ’90s, which didn’t have the luxury of backyard fields, settled with mentioning their farms—usually just outside the city—on their menus instead.

In India, a number of restaurants have settled for something in-between: food that speaks for itself, without having to spell out where it came from. In most cases, it’s partially farm-grown and partly bought from local farmers.

“It’s not possible to grow all the ingredients on a single farm, because each ingredient requires different soil and sunlight. So our idea is to grow as much as we can and outsource the rest,” explains Devidayal.

WHILE THE SUN SHINESAn offshoot of this availability of this seasonal ingredients is the idea of the seasonal menu, an increasingly popular feature in Indian eateries, where the chef pays homage to the produce of spring, summer and winter depending on what their farm yields.

Devidayal believes you need to invest a few years towards building a farm—to learn about soil, test what grows well and what doesn’t—before the results show.

While she hired an urban farmer to set up soil beds, she eventually learnt how to rely on local advice. While many might cast off partial field-to-fork eateries as a fad, Devidayal is convinced that they are here to stay. As restaurateurs get more conscious about what enters their kitchen and chefs more sensitive about menu planning, the diner gets to savour fresh vegetables. That’s what you call the grass being green all around.

The Table farm workshop in collaboration with the Mumbai Design Trail will be held on February 21 at The Table Farm, Alibaug.